When I mentioned that teaching mechanics might probably form a part of my employment I did not speak from any certain knowledge on the subject, but merely because such a thing had once been in agitation. I have now very little reason for supposing that such a plan will be at all put in practice, but if ever it should, no doubt the managers will take care that it shall not prove any inconvenience to you. I could not myself engage in it upon any other conditions. Setting that aside, therefore, as extremely uncertain if not improbable....
At the end of the year hot-water pipes were ordered for warming the theatre.
The chief events in the history of the Institution during the year 1800 may be thus summed up: The new theatre was built; large committees for scientific investigation were formed; and the first number of the Journal was published. No advance was made in the formation of a repository for models; or in the foundation of a school of design. The lectures of Dr. Garnett were successful, but he was refused permission to practise his profession as a physician and to bring his children to live at the Institution. Count Rumford himself ordered and superintended everything in the house. Early the next year there was a visible rupture between him and Dr. Garnett regarding the prospectus of the lectures for the season, and in June 1801 Dr. Garnett resigned.
The causes of this will be best seen by a short sketch of his life.
Dr. Thomas Garnett was born in 1766 in Westmoreland. He was apprenticed to a medical man in the country and graduated as a physician in Edinburgh in 1788. Dr. Brown at that time was teaching his new theory of medicine, and Dr. Garnett became a strong Brunonian. In an inaugural essay on Health, which was published ultimately, he showed with great clearness how the doctrine of accumulated and exhausted excitability could be applied to explain the movements in the body in health and disease.
He left Edinburgh to study medicine in London, and in 1790 he went to Bradford to practise his profession; there he gave some private lessons in natural philosophy and chemistry.
In 1791, when twenty-five, he thought he should succeed better by practising at Knaresborough in the winter and at Harrogate in the summer. He analysed the waters at Harrogate, and in 1794 he built a house there and determined to practise only at Harrogate. An engagement to be married made him form a new plan for success. He persuaded his intended wife reluctantly to agree to emigrate to America after their marriage, which took place in the following year. Then he sold his house in Harrogate and purchased apparatus for lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry. On their way to America they went to Liverpool. There, whilst waiting for a ship, he was persuaded to give a course of lectures. This was successful, and he was invited to give the same course on chemistry and experimental philosophy at Manchester. He was still more successful, and invitations came to him from Warrington, Lancaster, Birmingham, and Dublin. He did not give up his intention of emigrating until he was offered the professorship in Anderson’s Institution at Glasgow. His wife had borne him a daughter, and she earnestly urged him to settle in Glasgow.
In November 1796, when thirty, he published the ‘Outlines of a Course of Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy.’ His subjects were the properties of matter, astronomy, electricity, magnetism, pneumatics, hydrostatics and hydraulics, optics and mechanics.
When the session at Glasgow was over he went to Liverpool to repeat his course of lectures. In the autumn he returned to Glasgow and made known his intention of practising as a physician there. Fortune continued to favour him; his reputation increased and he soon had the best prospect of the leading practice in Glasgow.
In 1797, when thirty-one, he published his ‘Outlines of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry.’ His twenty-seventh lecture was on Agriculture; his twenty-eighth on Bleaching; his twenty-ninth on Dyeing and on Calico Printing; and his last on the Analysis of Mineral Waters.